Freehand flowers..............

Nelly Polish Night Sky with floral nail art

These flowers were inspired by some hand-made pottery I have, and an old jumper - both have a dark blue background with bold white flowers with yellow centres. The pottery has a lot of black line work too.

Since it's UK Indie Month, I used Nelly Polish Night Sky for the base; this is a super deep blue shimmer. I painted the petals freehand win Zoya Jacqueline, added the centres with Bourjois Sunny Sunday. When the flowers were fully dry (quite a long time, since I'd painted thickly), I added the line details with a Barry M Nail Art Pen in Black.

I love the way this turned out! I've been wearing it for a few days now, but sadly it's starting to look battered at the tips and grown out around the cuticles, so I'll have to change it :(

A few macros of the individual nails.............  I really like the contrast between the holo shimmer of the base and the opaque flowers.

And my thumb!

Nelly Polish Night Sky with floral nail art

For others:

Nelly Polish *holo* in Burnt Copper and Night Sky

Nelly Polish Burnt Copper and Night Sky

OK, I combined these two polishes in a gradient and I like it so much that's where I'm starting my post! I reviewed Nelly Polish Forest Holo the other day, and I mentioned I had a couple of others to try.......... well here they are! The are the same smooth, shimmery formula as Forest and two equally delicious colours. First up is Burnt Copper:

Nelly Polish Burnt Copper

This is a rich copper shimmer with a touch of holo - just what it says on the tin really. Application is very easy, the polish is a nice texture (I got the ready mixed versions of all these; I'm too much of a coward to risk mixing my own polishes from dried ingredients, but you can buy Nelly Polishes in a dried format if you do fancy having a go at mixing) goes on smoothly. I used three coats and a coat of Seche Vite quick drying top coat to give it a good shine - Nelly Polish Burnt Copper dried semi-matte.

Nelly Polish Burnt Copper

There's no sign of any brush strokes, as you can see in my macro shots (second one in brighter sunlight):

Nelly Polish Burnt Copper

And here is Night Sky. This might be my favourite of the three, but I love blue nails.

Nelly Polish Night Sky

On the nail, this one has a bit of a duochrome shift to purple in the sun, which I really like. As before, this is three coats with Seche Vite quick dry top coat to make it shiny......

Nelly Polish Night Sky

And a couple of macro shots to show the shimmer in its full glory!

Nelly Polish Night Sky

Then I decided to play around with a gradient. Blue and brown is one of my favourite colour combinations, but since these polishes are quite sheer, I wasn't sure it would work so well, but I was very pleasantly surprised!  I applied the gradient with the two colours painted on a damp makeup sponge over a base of Nelly Polish Burnt Copper. I needed to go over each nail twice with the gradient, but the results were well worth the effort.

Look how the blue and brown pigments blend into each other  - this shows up best in the macro pics...........

Nelly Polish Burnt Copper and Night Sky

Over the copper, the blue tends to reflect a bit more towards purple, but I like that contrast a lot. I love these polishes, they are great on their own but especially fab in combination for a gradient!

These products were provided for my review; you can purchase Nelly Polishes direct from the maker Hilary at her Etsy Shop

Nelly Polish *Forest* - swatch and review

Nelly Polish Forest 

Nelly Polish Forest is a beautiful soft dark green shimmer with a subtle holo. I think there is also a hint a duochrome shift in there too - I can see a touch of purply-brown around the edges of my nails in some lights!

The pictures are three coats of Forest with a thickish coat of Seche Vite quick drying topcoat. I could probably have got away with two coats of Forest, but I'm in the habit of doing three! Nelly Polish Forest dries to a matt-ish finish, so it does need a good topcoat to add shine and bring out the beauty of the pigment. 

Nelly Polish Forest 

The last couple of pictures are taken with my DSLR and macro lens (the others are with my compact) in brighter sunlight and show the detail of the pigments a bit better. One of the things I like most about this polish is that there are no signs of brush strokes - I'm usually wary of shimmers because of their tendency to show brush strokes and often apply them with a sponge, but I had no issues at all with this formula :)

Nelly Polish Forest 

Hilary, the maker of Nelly Polish, kindly sent me this as a sample for review, along with a couple of other gorgeous shimmery colours I'll be posting about soon. You can buy Nelly Polish Forest on Etsy; it comes in either a powder form, that you mix up yourself with clear polish, or as a ready made polish. This is the ready made version - whilst I'm intrigued by the idea of mixing up my own polish, I don't really trust myself to get it quite right so I was a bit of a coward when Hilary asked me what format I wanted the polish in and asked for ready made.

Nelly Polish - Jonah's Green and Looe

Nelly Polish - Looe and Jonah's Green

I have a couple of polishes from another new UK Indie brand to show you today - Nelly Polish. Nelly Polish is a little different to other polishes in that it can be purchased either as ready mixed polish or as powder to mix with your own clear polish. The idea behind this is so that the polish can be shipped out of the UK without infringing our (newly) very strict mail regulations. I opted for the ready made polish, but other bloggers have reviewed the powder mixture - have a look at Debbie Crumpet's post which explains the whole background to the idea and includes an interview with Hilary, the maker.

The Nelly Polish range are all jelly colours, hence the name - jelly nail polish  ~ *Nelly Polish*. Cute!  The bottles and labels are also super cute too!

Nelly Polish - Looe and Jonah's Green

My first choice was Jonah's Green. Named after Hilary's son Jonah, who came up with the colour. This is a rich jade green / aqua with gold holographic glitter of various sizes. I'd say the base is a bit more creamy than most jelly polishes - maybe we should call this one a crelly!

Nelly Polish  Jonah's Green

I'm usually a bit wary of jelly polish on it's own (just because my nail beds are all different lengths, so I have to make my nails look even by varying the length of free edge), although I love them for layering. However, Jonah's Green looked dense enough for me to try it alone. This is just two coats, with a layer of Gelous to smooth the glitters out and a layer of Seche Vite to finish. Before I added the topcoats, the finish was quite *rubbery* rather than high shine, but I don't think this matters at all since topcoat is definitely needed to smooth the glitters out in any case.

I love the colour and finish on this - you can see in the macro shots how the glitter takes on lots of depth and variation in the base. I think Jonah has great taste in colour :)  I seem to have picked up a few odd reflections in these macros; sorry about that, but my nails are smooth!

Nelly Polish  Jonah's Green

The second colour I tried is Looe. I love pink and green together, so this made it an obvious choice for me. That and memories of a childhood holiday in Looe when I was about nine. Looe is in Cornwall, which is a long way from home (well, in the UK scale of things it is) - what I remember most is how long it seemed to take to get there and seeing sharks being landed on the harbour!

Looe is much more of a jelly than Jonah's Green; it includes matt hexagonal glitters (I love matt glitters) of various sizes in a deep raspberry pink and small ones in yellow.

Nelly Polish Looe

I decided to layer this over another green - I liked effect Kerrie at PishPosh and Polish got by layering Looe over Barry M Spring Green but I didn't want to copy her exactly so I choose a lighter, brighter green ~ Barry M Gelly Nail Paint in Key Lime. I used one coat of Key Lime, two coats of Nelly Polish Looe, a coat of Gelous and a final coat of Seche Vite for this mani. The glitters in Looe are smaller than those in Jonah's Green, and lie very flat and smooth to my nails.  I love the colour of the base and how the glitters contrast with it!

And a few macro shots to show the glitter in a bit more detail:

Nelly Polish Looe

I purchased Nelly Polish Jonah's Green and Looe from Hilary at her Etsy Shop (actually, I bought three shades and Hilary sent me an extra one to review too, so I have another two Nelly Polish colours to share soon). My Barry M Gelly Nail Paint in Key Lime came from my local Boots.